The 430EX from Canon does not have a sync port, and why spend $20 bucks on a hot-shoe adapter when you can cheaply add your own (if you have the tools/skills required already) .. and by cheaply I mean it cost me $1 for a jack..which is all I needed.

I did some research trying to see if anyone had fit a 3.5mm sync port jack internally into a 430EX base – Could only find this one by Michael Bass. Looks like a pretty tight squeeze using a fancy metal plug. I found these but if you plugged in cable, they would probably foul on something because of the angle you would need to install it, so decided to go with an external plug instead. The pain in the ass with the 430EX is that there is barely any room to do anything in the base plate, unlike it’s bigger brothers.

I already had the tools and bits to do the job, only thing I had to buy was this 3.5mm mono socket from Dick Smith.

Was a pretty easy task, First thing (Obviously) is to take the base plate off by removing the 4x phillips head screws. Once off, I used a small flathead screwdriver to twist a hole through where one of the screws were (didn’t want to drill a new hole through the side..its a bit neater this way). The plastics pretty easy to get through without using a drill.

With the 3.5mm mono socket, I threw away the plastic outer cover and used a few different sizes of heatshrink to make it smaller.

All soldered up, tested and everything working.

Put everything back together, use a bit of bluetack (Tried using a gluegun but that stuff doesn’t stick to the heatshrink) and stuck it to the side. Holds well, while being easily removable if you want a better hold on the plug to connect a cable. Here’s the end result: